"Israel's human capital is a gold mine"
Michael Milken believes that healthcare and education are key to
prosperity, and that Israel is ahead in both.
by Gali Weinreb and Meir Dubitsky
Globes
December 5, 2007
In a "Globes" sponsored talk at Tel Aviv's David Intercontinental
Hotel, financier and philanthropist Michael Milken said, "If you look
only at assets, Israel has a third of the value of Exxon-Mobile,
but if you look at human capital, Israel is worth 15 Exxons.
Israel's human capital (according to a Milken Institute estimate) is
worth $7.15 trillion." Milken is visiting Israel to foster ties between
the Milken Institute and Israeli life sciences and cleantech
industries. He told his audience at the meeting that they were
sitting on an invisible gold mine - human capital. He noted that
global trends were operating in favor of Israel's economy, adding
that the country should let human capital flourish and should
foster it, and that if it does, Israel will become an economic
powerhouse within a few years.
Milken said, "Each leading Israeli research institute in an oil well
of a kind that will never run dry." He added that Israel's human
capital was so prominent because of the high quality of its
education system, the quality of its doctors, the participation of
women in the workforce and in the sciences, and the enrichment
of the sciences by immigration from Russia.
The former Wall Street executive reviewed his famous equation,
which theorizes that "prosperity" is a function of financial technology,
human capital, social capital, and real assets. He focused his
words on Israel's human capital.
Milken pointed out that there were three prime components to
improving a nation's human capital importing skilled labor,
educating the population, and providing for its health. He pointed
to several major corporations headed by CEOs who were not born
in the countries in which their firms were located such as Pepsico
and Union Bank CA.
Praising Israel's education level, Milken noted that 32% of Israeli
students are graduate students, and that 56.5% of students are
women.
Milken pointed out that Israel boasts the world's highest level per
capita for life sciences patents, and said that Israel could be the
"research laboratory for the world".
He added said that Israel was competing in human capital against
rapidly developing countries such as China and India, as well as
small, ambitious countries like Singapore. He presented figures
indicating that if present growth rates continue, Indonesia, and
Mexico will be among the world's top ten countries in 50 years at
the expense of countries like Canada and France, and India and
China will be the first places.
People who did not think that such shifts were possible should
note that in 1850, China and India were the world's largest
economies, Milken said. He cautioned, however, against making
such far-reaching predictions on the basis of current trends alone.
"If you extrapolate the growth in Elvis impersonators from the
50 at the time of death to the thousands today, in 50 years,
one of every three persons on earth will be an Elvis impersonator."